John Liu proposes offering preschool to all 3-year-olds in city

This chart in Comptroller John Liu’s latest report shows what he says is a $4.6 billion gap between what the city spends on early childhood programs and what it should be spending.

Comptroller John Liu’s latest plan to prime children to contribute as adults to the city’s economy would require the city to double its spending on early childhood education.

Liu — who is also running for mayor — argues in a new report that the city should spend $1 billion to create a city preschool program for three-year-olds; $433 million to open more pre-kindergarten seats; and $75 million to expand a program that sends nurses to the homes of low-income new mothers.

The $1.5 billion in new early childhood expenditures would match what the city already spends, using city, state, and federal dollars. But it represents only a third of the new funding that Liu estimates would be needed to provide city services to all city children from the time they are born until they enter school.

Liu, who as comptroller is responsible for ensuring the city’s fiscal health, said the new expenditures are essential to the city’s financial future. He also said they could be funded by increasing taxes on corporations and following other suggestions that taxpayers made this spring through the “People’s Budget” process. Children from families earning more than $47,000 a year would also contribute to the cost of preschool under Liu’s plan.

“We recognize that full program adoption and implementation is not possible overnight, but New York City must do more than it is doing now,” the report says.

Liu isn’t the only mayoral candidate to tackle early childhood education. Another mayoral candidate, Bill de Blasio, has put forth a plan to pay for expanded pre-kindergarten access by taxing New Yorkers earning over $500,000. Other candidates have also said they would make pre-kindergarten a priority, and both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and President Obama have pledged new support for pre-K programs, seen as essential to prepare low-income children especially for school. None of the proposals targets three-year-olds the way that Liu’s does.

The report is the latest in the comptroller’s “Beyond High School NYC” initiative, which Liu said uses research to propose “strategic investments in public education” to raise the college-graduation rate for New York City public school students. Previous reports in Liu’s “Beyond High School NYC” series called for the city to spend $176 million a year on guidance counselors to help more students get into college; to buy $40 million of computers a year to get all families online; and to overhaul the city’s school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy.